Mondly Lifetime Subscription (1 Language): $39.99

We have a deal on a lifetime subscription to Mondly, the language-learning platform. Mondly uses speech recognition and only gives positive feedback if you speak clearly and correctly. The deal I’m linking to is for one language for $39.99. There are deals available in the listing for 5 and all languages, too.

Judge Rules Cops can Search Through DNA Database GEDmatch

A judge recently ruled that law enforcement have the ability to search through DNA database GEDmatch, overriding the choice of its over one million users.

In the wake of that attention-grabbing case, GEDmatch changed its policies in May 2018 to make it less easy for police to access their data. Users now have to opt in to having their data made available to police; information they upload is set to private by default. Rogers told the NYT that as of October, less than 15% of current users, 185,000 out of 1.3 million, have opted in to sharing their data with police.

This Person Invented a Giant AirPod

Losing your AirPod is annoying. So someone invented a giant one. That person, Aaron B, told Mashable about it.

Building the replica was a bit of an undertaking. Aaron explained to Mashable that it took about five hours to model it, then another 15 hours to print it using a 3D printer. Despite this, Aaron called the build “pretty simple,” and offered his CAD model incase anyone else wants to try their hand at it. But the best part of this giant AirPod is that it is fully functioning. Not only does it look hilarious, but it’s able to play music via Bluetooth as well. “I got the idea from someone who made one a few years ago,” Aaron told Mashable. “Theirs was made in a similar way (3D printed housing and Bluetooth speaker electronics inside), but that model was a bit rough from scaling it up so much.”

Stop Broadcasting Polarizing Advertising to Millions of People

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey surprised a lot of people when he announced that the company would stop allowing paid-for political advertising. Targeted advertising as a whole is a hot topic at the moment. But, as Carl Millar points out for Wired, we need to think very carefully about how we discuss, and potentially amplify, these messages.

The battle for influence online is largely fought over attention. Cutting through the online noise to get something in front of you is half of the battle campaigners face and – of course – that’s what advertising is for. Now, suddenly – projected on studio screens, in countless write-ups and think pieces – ads intended to be seen only by a tiny few are instead broadcast to millions. It’s a weird reverse effect: the more granular the ad, the more likely it is to suddenly find an enormous audience as part of a discussion about whether people seeing it is bad for democracy. This certainly won’t be lost on the campaigns themselves. Advertisers have long courted publicity as one of the easiest and most effective ways of building buzz around their message

Only 44% of People Correctly Spotted Fake News on Facebook

In a small study (n=80) undergraduate students were fitted with a wireless electroencephalography (EEG) headset. They were then asked to read political news headlines as they would appear on a Facebook feed to determine their credibility. They overwhelmingly chose headlines that aligned with their political beliefs as true.

“We all believe that we are better than the average person at detecting fake news, but that’s simply not possible,” said lead author Patricia Moravec, assistant professor of information, risk and operations management. “The environment of social media and our own biases make us all much worse than we think.”